The Worth Of Knowing

“But I can’t see Him,” she groaned. My heart immediately ached in echo of the lament: we do not have our Savior physically with us to comfort and reassure us of His lavish love. These sort of thoughts often leave me with a kind of loneliness that feels a lot like homesickness. But this time, in moment of grace, I chose to ignore the fears and anger that began rushing in and instead said what I needed to hear:

“I know, Babe, it’s hard. You just want to see Him and give Him a hug. But you know Jesus did come to earth as a little baby and grew up and died on the cross for our sins. And guess what? He is coming back and we will see Him and He will make everything new and beautiful.”

“And I will be a princess?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said thinking that that wasn’t too much of stretch in theology, “Right now is hard because we’re in the in between. We’re waiting patiently and being hopeful.”

“Being patient is hard,” she said.

“It is. And the whole world is waiting – not just the people, but the trees and mountains and everything. God will make them new too.”

“And I will have a tiara and lots of dresses,” she added.

I smiled knowing we had reached our limit of serious conversation, but felt that she was simultaneously on to something.

There’s few things more wonderful to my imaginative 4 year old girl than beautiful dresses and tiara’s all her own. Everyone has their limit to the wonderful things they can imagine. For some of us the limit is fancy clothes and others it’s the extent to which we’ve been loved by people. None of us can imagine the full depth of God’s love for us (Eph. 3:19) or the extent of the glory waiting for us with Him (Rom. 8:18).

When my soul aches and feels alone I have this as my hope: I was made for intimate relationship with God. This is not a feeling I need to frantically get rid of. Waiting on God to do what He has promised often means waiting in the uncomfortable. It means cherishing and resting in the character of God that He has revealed to us. It means putting in the time to learn to hope in God’s promises while they’re still not reality.

“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.”
‭‭1 Corinthians‬ ‭13:12‬ ‭ESV‬‬